How former Clemson star Spencer Strider dealt in his MLB season debut

Former Clemson baseball pitcher Spencer Strider is finally back on a major league mound, but he was not exactly handing himself a gold star after his 2026 debut.

Strider made his season debut Sunday for the Atlanta Braves in an 11-6 win over the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field, giving Atlanta its strikeout machine back after he opened the year on the injured list with a left oblique strain. The former Tiger went 3 1/3 innings, allowing three earned runs on four hits while striking out six and walking five.

That is pretty much the full Spencer Strider return experience in one line. The swing-and-miss stuff was still there. The command was not.

Strider needed 87 pitches to get through 3 1/3 innings, digging his own grave immediately within the first two. Colorado pushed across a run in the first inning, then loaded the bases in the second before Strider worked out of it with a flyout. He later allowed a leadoff homer to TJ Rumfield in the third and was pulled in the fourth after giving up a triple to Jake McCarthy and striking out Edouard Julien.

The five walks tied a career high for Strider, which also came at Coors Field on June 4, 2022. According to MLB.com’s Owen Perkins, it was only the fifth start of Strider’s career in which he pitched 3 1/3 innings or fewer.

After the game, Strider was brutally honest about the outing when speaking with Perkins.

“I’d rather be pitching than hurt, for sure, but I don’t want a participation trophy,” Strider told MLB.com. “I’m here to help the team win games. I’m getting paid a ridiculous amount of money to do it, and if I can’t, then that’s a problem. So let’s find a way to be more effective than I was today. [I’ve] got a lot of work to do.”